Earlier this week a friend reminded me of a quote from Andrew Fletcher, a 17th century Scottish patriot. Fletcher quipped, “If I were permitted to write all the ballads I need not care who makes the laws of the nation.” What Fletcher hints at is something that every poet knows: beautifully written words, especially those in song, can radically shape and influence culture. I witnessed this very thing several years ago while attending a concert in Seattle. I, along with 500-700 others, crammed into a dank club to see Bright Eyes, an indie-folk band fronted by Connor Oberst. Midway through the set, Oberst and company launched into Waste of Paint, a song off their recently released album. Waste of Paint is a narrative describing the elusiveness, and often alienating tendencies, of life. As the song progresses it becomes increasingly sober, ultimately closing with this stanza:

So now I park my car down by the cathedral,
where floodlights point up at the steeples.
Choir practice was filling up with people.
I hear the sound escaping as an echo.
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle.
When voices blend they sound like angels.
I hope there is some room still in the middle.
But when I lift my voice up now to reach them.
The range is too high, way up in heaven.
So I hold my tongue, forget the song, tie my shoe and start walking off.
And try to just keep moving on,
with my broken heart and my absent God
and I have no faith but it is all I want,
to be loved and believe
in my soul,
in my soul
in my soul
in my soul.

Oberst’s performance was haunting not merely because of his starkly written poetry, but rather because all of us—every living and breathing soul in the room—were singing with him. The cacophony of voices joined together as if he had written the anthem of our common existence. When I left the venue that evening I felt, oddly enough, a little more human, like someone had diagnosed a lingering disease that been with me from birth. I’m guessing that this experience is somewhat ubiquitous, that is, it is a reality common to all of us. What Connor aptly described in song is the striking disparity between the way things “should be” and the way the world actually works. You understand this tension, don’t you? And this tension gives rise to many questions and doubts. Is life good? Is life fair? Is God good? Is God fair? Is He present?

In our text this morning, the Apostle Paul goes to the heart of this issue. He says that the tension we feel is the result of alienation. Biblically speaking alienation is estrangement. We are strangers in our own skin: strangers to our selves; strangers to our neighbors; strangers to God. For Paul this isn’t necessarily a cognitive failure on our part. It’s not that we primarily lack knowledge of our selves or have no concept of God. But rather, he is speaking relationally; He is speaking about our will and affections, about what we want and about whom we love. Sin has splintered everything. It is something that each one of us is responsible for; no one is immune. Like Connor said, it leaves us heart broken and distant from the God whom we desperately need.

According to Paul the gospel answers these questions with unflinching honesty. Paul writes that even though estrangement is so common to our human experience, God is working in the world to bring about reconciliation. We are all familiar with the term reconciliation; it’s what happens when two warring parties sign a truce, or when a husband and wife embrace after a heated argument. Reconciliation is peace; reconciliation is God’s welcome to those who have been estranged from him. This is the mystery of the gospel, and the heart of God’s love for his creatures: Jesus willingly suffered and died on the cross to reconcile us to the Father. For our sake He walked in the loneliest of places, taking upon himself all of our brokenness and guilt, all of our shame and estrangement. It is through Jesus that peace with God is made possible.

So what does God say to Connor and to the hundreds who sang along with him? How does God answer Connor’s claims that He’s absent or missing, especially when the pain of unbelief and estrangement is so palpable? I think our natural tendency is to doubt. Doubt God’s promises concerning reconciliation; doubt the meaning of Jesus’ death and so on. Doubt is powerful. It reassures us that we’re thinking, that our hearts are engaged in the process of dealing with sin and human brokenness. But doubt, as Connor demonstrates, is ultimately unsatisfying. It does not evoke the truth or beauty we long for, nor does it offer a solution for our estrangement. I want to suggest that trust or faith, not doubt, is a more beautiful way of approaching God and the world. It is through the faith in Jesus and his work that we are reconciled to God. To some faith is the dirty, little f-word of Christianity. These are convinced, like Nietzsche, that “faith” equals blindness; it’s closing one’s eyes to the reality of the world. However, this is not the robust faith that God requires. I’ve learned from John Calvin that faith seeks to understand God’s disposition towards us. And, what is this disposition? It’s love. God does not stand against us as an angry tyrant. He approaches as a benevolent Father; and the most vivid proof of God’s disposition towards us is Jesus Christ. So faith, then, is not blindness. Rather faith is sight. It is opening our eyes to what God has done in space and time through Jesus Christ.

In closing I want to encourage you to believe. Trust that God is good; trust that God is present in Jesus Christ; trust that reconciliation is possible.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

G.K. Chesterton

It is possible, however, to return home and attempt to put behind us the wandering ways of our first parents. Several suggestions are in order. First, make your house your kingdom, that is, the home is  the center from which you approach the world. Therefore, as God enables you, commit to it, sanctify it with your presence and the presence of others, and practice the law of grace within its boundaries. The more your imagination and heart is captured by your home, the more attentive you will be to your local neighborhood. Chesterton, somewhere in Heretics, talks specifically about the value of thinking small. More wisdom and clarity, he suggests, comes from playing in one’s backyard than galluping across the European countriside.  Our goal, he suggests, is to make our backyard the playground of the universe, seeing in it the meaning of every place because from it flows the things common to all men: love, “the beauty of women, and the promise or menace of the sky.” I tend to agree with him. Hilaire Belloc’s The Four Men is an excellent exercise in the type of wisdom Chesterton suggests. Finally, we should think concentrically. If our home is the center then we should from there to our front porch, to our lawn, to our sidewalk, to our street, etc. in order of importance. In this way our neighborhood, which once seemed quite small, is now rather large and our cities become countries in themselves.

But, should we expect anything less. The Sabbath invites us into God’s creational rest. It’s not only resting from our labors, from our work, but the Sabbath also calls us to remember our place within the created realm. The fact that we’re creatures necessitates the fact that we’re dependent beings. We’re often pursuaded that the work of our hands is precisely that–ours. It should occur to us more often than it does that what have, and even who we are as human beings, is a gift from God. Our food and drink and fruitful labors are gifts meant to be celebrated with joy and thanksgiving. Man from this perspective is fundamentally a eucharistic creature. He finds his deepest joy and delight in thanksgiving. A fine ale, time with friends, and joyous rest–all characteristics of a good Sabbath day–remind us, or at least me, of what it means to be a human and a son of the great Giver.

Hopefully, more to come soon.

–Czeslaw Milosz, Milosz’s ABC’s

And YHWH sat in the dust, bone weary after
days of strenuous making, during which He,
now and again, would pause to consider the
way things were shaping up. Time also would
pause upon these strange durations; it would
lean back on its haunches, close its marble
eyes, appear to doze.

But when YHWH Himself finally sat on the
dewy lawn—the first stage of his work all but
finished—He took in a great breath laced with
all lush odors of creation. It made him almost
giddy.

As He exhaled, a sigh and sweet mist spread
out from him, settling over the earth. In that
obscurity, YHWH sat for an appalling interval,
so extreme that even Time opened its eyes, and
once, despite itself, let its tail twitch. Then
YHWH lay back, running His hand over the
damp grasses, and in deep contemplation
reached into the soil, lifting great handsful of
trembling clay to His lips, which parted to
avail another breath.

With this clay He began to coat His shins,
cover His thighs, His chest. He continued this
layering, and, when He had been wholly
interred, He parted the clay at His side, and
retreated from it, leaving the image of Himself
to wander in what remained of that early
morning mist.

–Scott Cairns, from Recovered Body

–Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection

1.) Christopher West, Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pop John Paul II’s Sexual Revolution

West has made a career of summarizing John Paul’s theology of the body, and here he proves a helpful guide for the beginner. West’s strength is the time he spends in Genesis, unpacking the sacramental nature of the human body. Marriage, sex, and communion amongst persons are treated at length. Very helpful study written in plain language.

2.) Sam Torode, Theology of the Body in Simple Language

This has been perhaps my favorite summary of John Paul II’s theology of the body. Torrode is similar to West, although more terse and poetic.

3.) Lauren Winner, Real Sex

I must admit I was skeptical before picking this volume up. However, Winner is an extremely capable writer and does ethics in the vein of Stanley Hauerwas. Although, Winner’s focus is concentrated on singleness and chastity, her explanation of human embodiment, marriage, and sex as a communal discourse are extremely convincing. Helpful too are her personal and cultural anecdotes.

4.) Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics

I am still in the process of reading Lee, but thus far it has been helpful. Lee traces the Gnosticism through church history into the modern church. Although Lee’s book is not on the body per se, upon reading it one will get the rationale behind why most Protestants are bothered by all things physical, and/or the sacramental nature of creation.

I should note that most anything written by Wendell Berry, G.K. Chesterton, and Alexander Schmemann are also very helpful.

***

“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things–trout as well as eternal salvation–come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”

–Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories